Dual Format SSD

Picked up a Pi Harder Lite (RISCOSBits) at the RO SW Show the other weekend. Fitted a 500Gb WD Blue 2.5" SSD internally, and I can get it to work, albeit only the first 232Gb (Filecore limit). Anyway, what I want to do is to partition it. Seeing as the Pi4 in this thing can run Linux, and the supplied SD Card supports booting linux, I want to basically split it it two, maybe three with a Filecore partition for RO, a FAT32, to xfer stuff between the two and an ext3 or whatever partition for linux native stuff… Is there anyone out there who can walk me through the process?

It is fairly easy.

The filecore partition must be set up first under RISC OS and will occupy the first partition, hopefully it will be marked with a ‘filecore’ (&AD) parttition type. Use Utilities.Caution.HForm.

In Linux under disk utilities you will see this partition – just add FAT32 and ext partitions. You should see something similar to this:

which is what you see with a Pi distro. You should just see a filecore partition. WROCC magazine Jan 2021 has more detail.

Can you point me to the WROCC article? What version of RISC OS are you using? I didn’t think filecore on 5.28 was aware of partitions…

Filecore is not aware of partitions but does mark out a filecore partition type in the partition table to stop it being overwritten by other OS.

You need to be a member of WROCC to download the back numbers of the magazine. You want the Jan 2021 issue.

You need to be a member of WROCC to download the back numbers of the magazine. You want the Jan 2021 issue.

I’m not sure that even members have an easy way to access back issues beyond the past six months. They’re all in The Wakefield Back Catalogue, however, and that’s available for anyone to buy from us.

I’ve had a quick peek at the WROCC article. It is expecting to start with a disc formatted by SystemDisc (i.e. one that already has a FAT32 partition and a FileCore partition marked in the MBR). Simply running HForm won’t alter the MBR: it’ll just write the FileCore essentials (root directory etc.) to the disc.

You have two options:

1. Buy SystemDisc to create the FileCore partition entry in the MBR (it will also create a small FAT32 partition, which can be removed if you’re careful).
2. Jon Abbott was working on a Partition Manager that ran under RISC OS. I am not sure of its current status, but it should be up to the task of recognising that HForm has been there before it and create the necessary FileCore partition entry in the MBR.

Once the FileCore partition is properly marked in the MBR, you can use your favourite disc partitioning tool to create the additional partitions. MBR will of course restrict you to a maximum of 4 partitions on the SSD.

I have been banging on about the MBR because it’s important that you use MBR rather than GPT. RISC OS ignores partitions, but it does expect to find FileCore boot blocks in specific locations, and if the extended partition table used by GPT has trampled over them the FileCore partition won’t work.

I am indeed using MBR… I do already have a copy of SystemDisc… Can I therefore use SystemDisc again to mark the FAT32 partition after I create it to create a mount point on the FileCore partition?? If you understand what I mean…

The sequence is:

1. Run HForm (I assume you have already done this)
2. Run SystemDisc to create a FAT partition. As you won’t be using this you can just accept the default size.
3. SystemDisc will prompt you to install bootloader files in the FAT partition. This isn’t necessary (unless you really are going to be booting from SSD) so you can just close SystemDisc without copying any files.

When you look at the SSD with your favourite disc partitioning tool, you should see a small FAT partition and a somewhat larger FileCore partition, allowing you to create 2 further partitions with ease. Remember that !Boot.Loader in the FileCore partition will be pointing at the small FAT partition created by SystemDisc, so getting rid of that partition has to be done with care.

Depending on how big a partition you want to be shared between the two operating systems, you might be tempted to create a 4GB FAT partition for that purpose, using SystemDisc. Not sure but I think it restricts you to 4095MB. Doing it that way saves you creating an extra partition later on. But you can’t resize it, and it’s still mapped to the Loader folder inside !Boot.

OK… I think I’m pretty much there now. It would just be nice to have an additional drive icon on the iconbar for the Filecore partition. (Iconbar seems to default to the 100gb FAT32 partition.) Would be nice to have both, as both are mounted.

As for sizes, I have a 256Gb filecore, 98gb FAT32, and a 112gb ext4 at the end

It would just be nice to have an additional drive icon on the iconbar for the Filecore partition. (Iconbar seems to default to the 100gb FAT32 partition.) Would be nice to have both, as both are mounted.

AddTinyDir may do what you want.

Looks like it may well do… I’ll have a play tomorrow and let you know here…

I think the very latest version of FAT32FS has an option to reverse how it works,so you can mount the filecore partition automatically, and use adjust click to mount the FAT partition.

You can also use OmniDisc from !Store to mount the Filecore Partition as an extra icon, if you leave FAT32 to work in the traditional way.